Problems Dragging Files to Flash Drive on
B&W G3
From Lee Shartau:
Hi Charles
Been awhile.
To refresh: I had a PowerBook G3
400 Lombard that I contend OS X 10.2.8 fried the motherboard
in. Some others have had a similar problem with slot load iMacs. The only time the fan
came on was during extended pinball games.
So as I have externals that use SCSI, I bought another to
replace it. You thought a snow iBook would be a better option.
Seems that they have an iStink
problem! Not clear if this only on 12 inchers or across the
board. So to question: On iMac's there is a firmware revision that
must be applied first. On Apples website there is no such revision
for G3/400 DVD PowerBooks.
So do I risk having same problem with 10.3.9? My old one showed
screen conflict on start up - went to black and white. Resolved by
going into control panel. Should I have gone back to 10.2.6?
Do I let 10.3.9 coexist on 6 GB drive or partition drive with
just enough space for OS's and leave the rest for work? How much
space does OS X take with enough "headroom" to apply updater
files? On 040 chip drives there were smaller blocks, so upgrading
the hard drive did not give as much room as expected. Any ideas
appreciated.
On another matter. I thought to put important data on flash
drive and carry it when away from home. I've been fooling around
with a Memorex Mini TravelDrive 512 MB for months. Seems this
version is not Drag and Drop, so I finally got frustrated and took
it back to Future Shop.
They would not refund but exchanged as though it were faulty. This
unit worked fine on new iMacs and on XP and Vista in shop. But on
Blue and White I would get out of room message while there was
still 466.66 MB available.
I tried putting files in folder, etc. All the things Memorex
support told me. Two different staffers, multi visits. So will I
have same problem again? Or should I go to a Lexar drive. They seem
to be the only firm who make drives that play nice with
Macintosh.
OBTW I have a small zMate that has not had this problem.
Thanks
Mr. Lee Shartau
Hi Lee,
I'm agnostic about any version of OS X being able
to cook a motherboard. Lombards had some logic board issues and
trouble with processor cache failures. OS X does tend to make
machines run hotter than they would running OS 9, so the
greater heat could conceivably contribute to the accelerated
failure of a component that was already on the way out.
I've heard lots of reports about the stinky iBooks
(some sort of smelly adhesive in the keyboard underside, if I
recall). Happily my 700 MHz G3 unit, now in its fifth year of
service, has not been afflicted, so it certainly isn't
universal.
If Apple hasn't a firmware update for the Lombard
posted on their support site, there isn't one. There is one for the
Pismo.
OS X likes lots of free space on the boot
drive or partition. I like to have 3 GB or more free and find
that with under 2 GB free on a fresh boot, you begin to
encounter slowdowns once the swapfiles start to accumulate and eat
up drive space.
IMHO, OS X 10.3.9 is the optimum version for a
Lombard.
I'm afraid I can't be much help with your flash
drive issue. I don't have one and thus have no real experience. My
daughter has one that works fine with her G4 iBook, but I don't recall the brand,
and she's in Japan.
Charles
Using Linux for Troubleshooting a Mac
From Tiago Bugarin after reading Problems Troubleshooting a Slot-loading
iMac:
Hi, I recommend you to try Linux before you buy any software.
Xubuntu Linux is a good one
for a start. It has a lightweight graphical user interface, and if
it boots you can see if the hardware is okay.
Also, recently a friend bought an iBook G4 and it came with a nonfunctional
hard drive. No Mac-only application could tell me why the
S.M.A.R.T. returns 'OK' and every other analysis tool returns I/O
problems. As the hard drive had no data to lose, I could boot a
Linux CD and do a as hard as possible with permission to destroy
data check and repair. For this task I choose Slackintosh [Linux]
that booted to a command line only interface with no use of
hardware resources and did the task.
Xubuntu for Mac can be downloaded for free at http://www.xubuntu.org/get#edgy
(choose from where do you prefer to download; I recommend the
6.10 "edgy eft" version but feel free to download any one)
Slackintosh can be downloaded for free at http://workaround.ch/download.html
(as before choose the closest place to download the ISO; you
will find a DVD and a set of CDs for download, as you are not
intended to install Slackintosh Linux - at least I didn't
understand that way - you can download only the 1st CD as it is the
one that boots and has the tools for analysis, check and
formatting.
This is the manual page for the badblocks program that checks
the hard drive for problems.
http://www.die.net/doc/Linux/man/man8/badblocks.8.html
It can just check, repair in some cases without destroying, or
destroy and repair. Note that it can't repair any hard drive
problems, as some are not repairable with software.
The command I used in my friends laptop was
badblocks -wvfs -t random /dev/hda
note: /dev/hda means the device (/dev) is as hard disk (hd) and
is the first one (a); if the hard drive is ATA/IDE/PATA, it will be
'hd'; if it is SATA, it will be 'sd'; if it is the first one it
will be 'a', the second will be 'b', and so on.
REMINDER: badblocks can be dangerous to your data; backup before
use it.
Good luck!
Thanks Tiago. I've forwarded the info to
Steve.
Charles
Re: Problems Troubleshooting a Slot-loading
iMac
From D. Smith to help with Problems Troubleshooting a Slot-loading
iMac:
Tell Steve to reseat the cable from motherboard to optical and
hard drives.
Dennis
Thanks Dennis.
Forwarded to Steve.
Charles
FireWire Boot Drives and Bootable
Partitions
From Clint Bradford:
I am very embarrassed. I have been involved with personal
computers for about a quarter century. It wasn't until last
September, though, that my wife brought home a coworker's MacBook Pro - and after playing with it
all night, I ordered my first Apple computer the next day.
I feel a need to create a bootable external drive for my
17" MacBook Pro (not Core 2 -
purchased in 09/2006). Am I being paranoid? I found the OWC Mercury
100 MB FW800 Hitachi portable unit. But I am open to any other
suggestions.
But concepts like "Install OS X onto your FireWire drive..." and
"bootable partitions" are escaping me. And I have searched the
Apple Support forums and used Google. Is there a "tutorial" for
MacBook Pro owners for this task?
Many thanks for your columns.
Clint Bradford
"What? Clint's using a Mac???"
Hi Clint,
Having an external backup drive with a bootable
installation of OS X on it can be very convenient, as can having a
second operating system installed on separate partition, provided
you have the free hard drive capacity.
For example, I have an external FireWire hard
drive with OS X 10.3.9 installed on it from which I can boot
my 17" PowerBook , my Pismo PowerBook , and my G3 iBook - useful for troubleshooting
and things like running Alsoft Disk Warrior without the tedium of
booting from a CD.
I also have, currently, OS X 10.4.9 installed on
one of my 17" PowerBook's hard drive partitions, and OS X 10.4.8 on
another partition, the tandem systems making it possible to run
version updates without burning my bridges to the previous,
known-stable version.
This is all "belt & suspenders", and the vast
majority of Mac users just go with a single system on an
unpartitioned hard drive and get along fine.
However, I've always partitioned my drives (even
the little 20 MB unit of my ancient Mac Plus) and kept multiple system
versions installed. I prefer external hard drives as file backup
media whether they are bootable or not (FireWire ones are, USB
drives are not on my pre-Intel 'Books).
For more on partitioning, see these articles:
Installing OS X on hard drive partitions or
external bootable volumes (e.g.: FireWire) is just a matter of
selecting the desired volume in the installer dialog.
You can select the startup volume you want to boot
from using the Startup Disk system preferences panel or just hold
down the Option key at startup.
Hope this helps.
Charles
How Do I Know if an External FireWire DVD Drive
Is Bootable?
From James Glasscock in response to Installing OS X 10.4 'Tiger' on DVD-challenged
Macs Using FireWire Target Disk Mode:
I've just read your article with interest. I've got an iBook (G3/800, FireWire, CD) and have a
FireWire LaCie Porche DVDr. How do I know if that's "bootable" or
not?
Thanks,
James
Hi James,
It should be, although I can't give you 100
percent certainty. The way to test is to connect the DVD drive,
insert the OS X 10.4 install DVD or just a CD (like your iBook's
System Restore CD) in the drive, and try to boot from it (hold down
the C key while booting).
Installing from an external FireWire DVD drive is
a much more satisfactory way of installing OS X than using the
Target Disk Mode workaround.
Charles
Solving Video Problems on a B&W G3
From Larry Stotler in response to Video Problems with B&W Power
Mac:
Jack Curry's problems running video on his 500 MHz B&W probably have two causes:
- The overclocking could be causing the CPU to skip, since video
playing can be pretty CPU intensive. If he's using an MP4 codec
like DivX, the CPU has to do all the work, and the Radeon's MPEG2
decoder won't be utilized.
- It's a G3. I've had issues with video playback under Linux
using MPlayer on a G3.
Swapping in a G4 of similar speed greatly cleans up the frame drop
issue. My G3-AIO has a G4/350
running at 366, and it skips a little playing XviD movies due to
the fact that I can't get the L2 cache working yet (BTW, if you
know anything about using ResEdit, I could use
some pointers). When I had the same chip in a B&W running at
400 MHz, video playback was smooth as silk (New World machines see
the G4's L2, whereas I can't get BootX to see it on my Old World
ones yet). When I had a G3/466 in my WallStreet, playback stuttered. I'm
planning on a G4 upgrade eventually, and I'll bet that fixes it.
Why? AltiVec, of course. I don't know what playback program he was
using, but he could try MPlayer for OS X to see if that helps.
Later
Thanks Larry.
Forwarded to Jack.
Charles
Re: Maximum Hard Drive Size for Older Macs
From Amir Rifczes in response to Maximum Hard Drive Size for Older
Macs:
Again - thanks a lot for all the effort and info. I walked to
three places in Los Angeles, and in all of them could not find the
detailed info you have just provided me. I did manage to get my
hands on a used 1 GB internal SCSI [drive] - I now have to "crack"
it open and install the System 7.6 and whatever applications I
have.
Again thanks a lot for the info.
Alfred
You're welcome.
Charles
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